Friday, January 27, 2006

Way to bring the child prostitution, lady.

Last fall I went to a new-agey dance class I’d heard about. The format sounded great: twenty minute stretch, hour and a half of free dance to dj’ed music, fifteen minute guided cooldown. For all that I’m about to make fun of it, the truth is that if the music had been just a notch more thumpy, I would never miss a week.

When I got there, I was a little put off that the class all seemed to be slightly older women (less thumpy music). There was one guy. He was in his mid-fifties, and you could tell that he had been a formally trained balletier. He's carrying a belly now, but his legs were completely cut and he was very flexible. You could see that he had nice legs because he was wearing the smallest french-cut leotard you can imagine.

I was also slightly dismayed to hear that I had come to class near the beginning of a series on dancing with our chakras. In general, people in Sacramento don’t have chakras. But I have my hippy co-op background to draw on, and I was not afraid. While I am more of a chi girl myself, I knew I could imagine my body bathed in a beautiful orange color, focus on my sexuality and creativity, and dance with my second chakra for a couple hours.

The dancing went fine. I did dance as I waited for the music to escalate, but I mostly watched the slightly older women dance all grindy, or do floor work. The balletier did a nice series of leaps. When the class ended, the teacher drew us all into a circle. She wanted us to talk about our experiences dancing with our chakra of desire, creativity and sexuality.

Our teacher went first, and she told us that it had been hard for her to keep her focus on her second chakra. She had been drawn into the dancing, and had to constantly bring her focus back.

A woman who had come in late went next. She was nearly in tears. She said that she wanted to come to class so much, but it seemed like everything was fighting her, her office, her car, traffic, her kids, her clothes. Her desire was just to be here.

The next woman said that evoking her desire had been a strong experience for her. She said that we spend so much time denying our desires and delaying gratification that actively seeking and expressing her desire felt really new.

The balletier simply thanked us all for dancing with him.

The next woman said “Dancing with my sexuality was a very powerful experience for me. It really brought me back to the first time I was paid for sex when I was seven.”

1 Comments:

Megan cranks her (already endearing) blog up a notch with that crazy wacky story! Nice work, darlin! We talked about how versatile that line is in almost any situation, now that I'm in DC meeting lots of new people and trying to start a new job I should have no problem working it into a number of conversations this month!